ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS
Incentives for the preservation of vulnerable plant species in forests
Doctoral school : SJPEG — Political science, Policy, Economics and Management
Research topic : Incentive programs for biodiversity conservation – Dynamic and spatial analysis.
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Emeline Hily is a young researcher in the Forest Economics Laboratory (LEF) in Nancy. Researchers in this lab study the impact of human activities on the quality of forest services (that ultimately benefit humans) as well as on their economic value. In effect, the forest is large reservoir of plants and animals which also plays an important role in “cleaning” our air and our water. Emeline’s research focuses on determining ways to offer financial incentives to forest owners to protect certain plant species living in their forests and prevent their total disappearance as a result of climate change*.
*Climate changes are accompanied by increasing average temperatures of oceans and of the atmosphere, as well as modified precipitation (quantity of rainfall, snow, etc.) These changes are occurring all over the world and have been for several years.
“The environmental economy and its results provide us with an excellent communication tool to illustrate how nature and it’s protection both create value in the same way as other economic activities. This is one of the reasons that convinced me to get involved in this field.”
The climate is changing: in coming years, it will be warmer and drier. This will prompt many animal and plant species to migrate North for more favorable conditions, like birds do when they return from Africa in the spring. The issue is that these species will need to migrate quickly as these climate changes are happening rapidly. They will also be faced with logistical obstacles such as roads and cities which will make this more difficult for certain species of plants, which risk disappearing altogether!
How can we prevent this from happening? By reaching out to forest owners to encourage them to create favorable conditions in their forests to welcome these migrating species. This is a service which benefits society but is one which comes at a cost for forest owners: they are effectively required to visit their forests more often, and may even be required to pay for work to be done. These land owners are rewarded by public funds.
But not all forest owners are alike. They may not, for example, be aware of which plants live in their forests, or they themselves may live far away. It would not be fair to pay all forest owners the same amount! Complicating things further, only the forest owner know how much exactly it would cost to improve protection for a given species: this is their hidden information. But all of this information which is difficult to come by is key to determining how to pay these land owners a “fair price” and when to do this at the “right moment”. Migration is generally a slow process which means that all forest owners will not be required to protect a given species at the same time.
How do we determine a “fair price”? This is the question that Emeline is attempting to answer through her research. She translates into mathematical language the forest owners’ behavior, their characteristics and specific effects of climate change. Then, as would be done for the weather, she makes forecasts: her computer tells her how much should be paid to each forest owner to permit them to protect vulnerable plant species over the next 10 years, 20 years..
*A plant species is deemed vulnerable if it is at risk of disappearing as a result of climatic changes (for example: a rare species will exhibit low migration capacity).
The objectives —
- To define “customized” payments which encourage forest owners to preserve plant species diversity while spending less public money
- To establish maps which define the correct amount to be paid per plant species, by geographical area to correspond to each stage of climate change.
